Ad Networks Still Rock Socks. What Are These Niches?
April 16th, 2008 | by Brad King |comScore released its month advertising numbers, ranking the top ad networks online.
While AOL may be struggling mightily with its traditional media parent company, its online advertising network continues to dominate the landscape, reaching more than 90 percent of all US Internet users. Yahoo and Google followed, reaching 85 and 80 percent of the market respectively.
But we know about these big networks. It’s the place to be if you’re creating a massive network as many media companies are doing today.
What’s interesting to me is that there are niche-oriented advertising networks springing up.
This grabs my attention because when we were building the business plan at Technology Review, one of our main assets was the high cost-per-thousand (CPM) we could bring to the table. God love Jason, we didn’t always agree on things, but he was right about not diluting that premium price by joining ad networks where we’d be lumped in with other properties.
These niche-oriented advertising networks, one assumes, take that approach to selling. Instead of lowering the CPM in order to sell remnant advertising (the advertising that gets taken up by house ads and such, which make no money for the company) or even to increase inventory sell thru (which raises your actual CPM).
“The reality is that advertisers have different objectives with their online campaigns,” added Mr. Hackett. “While some are focused on broadening the reach of their brand, others prefer a more focused approach that can deliver a higher frequency. The emergence of these niche ad networks represents an evolution for the online advertising industry that is giving advertisers more precise targeting and better control of their online campaigns.”
As companies rush to join ad networks, to build inventory that can be monetized and to capitalize on the growing online market, it’s important to remember that the price points that you set today will be the price points you have to live with in the future. The less control you have on those control, the more likely it is you’ll find yourself descending into the “traffic chasing” circle of Dante’s Inferno, always after that extra little bit of traffic to make up for the ever-declining CPM.
